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He began his career as an English teacher at Holland Park School in London. In the mid-1970s, while still a teacher, he won a British TV talent contest, New Faces, with a comedy double act called "Mr Carline & Mr Walling." He immediately quit teaching and embarked on launching his new career in comedy. When the comedy duo split up, Walling moved into situation comedy, appearing in several series—"Just Liz", "Bootle Saddles" and then the very successful "Brush Strokes". He was also starting to get more work as a screenwriter when he teamed up with Tony Millan. The two of them wrote screenplays for a number of different shows, as well as their own series.

In the early 1980s Walling teamed up with session bass player Mo Foster for various comedy music projects, with Walling writing the lyrics and Foster writing the music and producing the resulting songs.[citation needed]

One of their songs, "The Papadum Song", a novelty song revolving around two men visiting an Indian restaurant (one of them for the first time) was repeatedly played on BBC Radio 1 and featured them live on several TV shows (including the BBC's Blue Peter) and was very popular at the time, but fate and industrial action decreed that it would not sell. A three-week strike at the distributors (Phonogram Records) meant that the records never actually got to the shops. The song was eventually re-released in 2006[1] as part of a collection of comedy/parody songs called Make Tea, Not War by the imaginary, but ill-fated and tragic, R.J. Wagsmith Band. Another song from the same album, "Chalk Dust", which was written for Roger Kitter who released it under the pseudonym "The Brat", did hit the top ten all over Europe. Walling has recently appeared in shows such as "The Smoking Room", "Coronation Street" and My Family.